Stamford students improve in state math, reading tests

Mastery test results showing improvement

By Wynne Parry, Staff Writer

Published 2:57 am, Tuesday, September 1, 2009

STAMFORD -- City elementary and middle school students for the most part have made gains in math and reading on the 2009 Connecticut Mastery Test as compared to last year, continuing a general upward trend since the current version of the test was first administered in 2006. Performance on the writing section, however, was not as strong.

The CMT scores released Wednesday brought other good news -- groups of students with a history of lagging behind, particularly black and poor students, showed better-than-average progress in most areas, a sign of a narrowing achievement gap over the past three years.

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"Our teachers are raising expectations for all kids across the board, and we are putting in some supports so our children are able to meet those expectations," Superintendent Joshua Starr said.

Stamford's trends either mirrored or exceeded the state's, he said, citing growth in the fifth, sixth and eighth grades, where certain groups of city students showed more growth than, or simply outperformed, their statewide counterparts.

Starr attributed these improvements to a variety of factors, including corporate support from groups like the GE Foundation, which is contributing $15.3 million over five years, as well as curriculum improvements, teacher training and planning time, and more principal presence in the classroom.

"It's no one factor," he said.

As part of efforts to revamp the district's middle schools, a new schedule was implemented at the start of the last school year, providing blocks of time for enrichment in math and literacy, he noted.

However, the percentages of city school district students overall reaching or exceeding goal continues to lag behind the state by as much as 10 points. And the growth seen in elementary and middle schools in Stamford mirrors state numbers.

Third grade is an exception to this trend, with Stamford students' performance improving from the first year the test was administered but declining this year compared to 2008 in math and reading.

Trends for overall writing scores, too, vary greatly, with performance declining since 2006 in Stamford fifth and sixth grades, and flat in fourth.

"Literacy needs to be woven into every content area," Starr said, adding, "We haven't turned serious attention to it yet."

In this year's budget, he has earmarked stimulus funds for improvements to elementary literacy instruction.

Stamford 10th-graders who took the Connecticut Academic Performance Test did well with writing, though their performance elsewhere was not strong, with fewer reaching the goal, or higher, in math, along with a modest increase in reading and a decline in science. Although state scores were consistently much higher, students statewide lost more ground, declining in all subjects but reading.

Results of both tests determine schools' and districts' status under the federal No Child Left Behind accountability law, which separates students into groups to monitor persistent gaps in performance.

Perhaps some of the most optimistic results appeared in a breakdown of performance gains by these groups of Stamford students over the past three years.

Black students, for example, typically lag far behind their white and Asian counterparts. In eighth grade math, only 26.4 percent scored at or above goal within the district, but that number rises to 32.2 percent at the state level. In comparison, 54.7 percent of all of the district's eighth graders reached this level.

However, data from the past three years show that black students made gains exceeding the overall improvement in most grades and subjects, as did poor students. Hispanic students were close behind, followed by special education students.

One subgroup, however, consistently lagged behind others in terms of growth: English language learners.

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Starr said providing their teachers with more training in content, as was done with special education teachers this past year, might address this gap.

Staff Writer Wynne Parry can be reached at 203-964-2263 or wynne.parry@scni.com.